AWS News Blog

Announcing the AWS Chatbot Challenge – Create Conversational, Intelligent Chatbots using Amazon Lex and AWS Lambda

If you have been checking out the launches and announcements from the AWS 2017 San Francisco Summit, you may be aware that the Amazon Lex service is now Generally Available, and you can use the service today. Amazon Lex is a fully managed AI service that enables developers to build conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. Lex uses the same deep learning technologies of Amazon Alexa-powered devices like Amazon Echo. With the release of Amazon Lex, developers can build highly engaging lifelike user experiences and natural language interactions within their own applications. Amazon Lex supports Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Twilio SMS enabling you to easily publish your voice or text chatbots using these popular chat services. There is no better time to try out the Amazon Lex service to add the gift of gab to your applications, and now you have a great reason to get started.

May I have a Drumroll please?

I am thrilled to announce the AWS Chatbot Challenge! The AWS Chatbot Challenge is your opportunity to build a unique chatbot that helps solves a problem or adds value for prospective users. The AWS Chatbot Challenge is brought to you by Amazon Web Services in partnership with Slack.



The Challenge

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to build a conversational, natural language chatbot using Amazon Lex and leverage Lex’s integration with AWS Lambda to execute logic or data processing on the backend. Your submission can be a new or existing bot, however, if your bot is an existing one it must have been updated to use Amazon Lex and AWS Lambda within the challenge submission period.

 

You are only limited by your own imagination when building your solution. Therefore, I will share some recommendations to help you to get your creative juices flowing when creating or deploying your bot. Some suggestions that can help you make your chatbot more distinctive are:

  • Deploy your bot to Slack, Facebook Messenger, or Twilio SMS
  • Take advantage of other AWS services when building your bot solution.
  • Incorporate Text-To-speech capabilities using a service like Amazon Polly
  • Utilize other third-party APIs, SDKs, and services
  • Leverage Amazon Lex pre-built enterprise connectors and add services like Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and QuickBooks as data sources.

There are cost effective ways to build your bot using AWS Lambda. Lambda includes a free tier of one million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month. This free, per month usage, is for all customers and does not expire at the end of the 12 month Free Tier Term. Furthermore, new Amazon Lex customers can process up to 10,000 text requests and 5,000 speech requests per month free during the first year. You can find details here.

Remember, the AWS Free Tier includes services with a free tier available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date, as well as additional service offers that do not automatically expire at the end of your 12 month term. You can review the details about the AWS Free Tier and related services by going to the AWS Free Tier Details page.

 

Can We Talk – How It Works

The AWS Chatbot Challenge is open to individuals, and teams of individuals, who have reached the age of majority in their eligible area of residence at the time of competition entry. Organizations that employ 50 or fewer people are also eligible to compete as long at the time of entry they are duly organized or incorporated and validly exist in an eligible area. Large organizations-employing more than 50-in eligible areas can participate but will only be eligible for a non-cash recognition prize.

Chatbot Submissions are judged using the following criteria:

  • Customer Value: The problem or painpoint the bot solves and the extent it adds value for users
  • Bot Quality: The unique way the bot solves users’ problems, and the originality, creativity, and differentiation of the bot solution
  • Bot Implementation: Determination of how well the bot was built and executed by the developer. Also, consideration of bot functionality such as if the bot functions as intended and recognizes and responds to most common phrases asked of it

Prizes

The AWS Chatbot Challenge is awarding prizes for your hard work!

First Prize

  • $5,000 USD
  • $2,500 AWS Credits
  • Two (2) tickets to AWS re:Invent
  • 30 minute virtual meeting with the Amazon Lex team
  • Winning submission featured on the AWS AI blog
  • Cool swag

Second Prize

  • $3,000 USD
  • $1,500 AWS Credits
  • One (1) ticket to AWS re:Invent
  • 30 minute virtual meeting with the Amazon Lex team
  • Winning submission featured on the AWS AI blog
  • Cool swag

Third Prize

  • $2,000 USD
  • $1,000 AWS Credits
  • 30 minute virtual meeting with the Amazon Lex team
  • Winning submission featured on the AWS AI blog
  • Cool swag

 

Challenge Timeline

  • Submissions Start: April 19, 2017 at 12:00pm PDT
  • Submissions End: July 18, 2017 at 5:00pm PDT
  • Winners Announced: August 11, 2017 at 9:00am PDT

 

Up to the Challenge – Get Started

Are ready to get started on your chatbot and dive into the challenge? Here is how to get started:

Review the details on the challenge rules and eligibility

  1. Register for the AWS Chatbot Challenge
  2. Join the AWS Chatbot Slack Channel
  3. Create an account on AWS.
  4. Visit the Resources page for links to documentation and resources.
  5. Shoot your demo video that demonstrates your bot in action. Prepare a written summary of your bot and what it does.
  6. Provide a way to access your bot for judging and testing by including a link to your GitHub repo hosting the bot code and all deployment files and testing instructions needed for testing your bot.
  7. Submit your bot on AWSChatbot2017.Devpost.com before July 18, 2017 at 5 pm ET and share access to your bot, its Github repo and its deployment files.

Summary

With Amazon Lex you can build conversation into web and mobile applications, as well as use it to build chatbots that control IoT devices, provide customer support, give transaction updates or perform operations for DevOps workloads (ChatOps). Amazon Lex provides built-in integration with AWS Lambda, AWS Mobile Hub, and Amazon CloudWatch and allows for easy integrate with other AWS services so you can use the AWS platform for to build security, monitoring, user authentication, business logic, and storage into your chatbot or application. You can make additional enhancements to your voice or text chatbot by taking advantage of Amazon Lex’s support of chat services like Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Twilio SMS.

Dive into building chatbots and conversational interfaces with Amazon Lex and AWS Lambda with the AWS Chatbot Challenge for a chance to win some cool prizes. Some recent resources and online tech talks about creating bots with Amazon Lex and AWS Lambda that may help you in your bot building journey are:

If you have questions about the AWS Chatbot Challenge you can email aws-chatbot-challenge-2017@amazon.com or post a question to the Discussion Board.

 

Good Luck and Happy Coding.

– Tara

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Tara Walker

Tara Walker

Tara was a Technical Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, dedicating her time to help developers build apps, games, and technical solutions in the AWS cloud. Tara worked on evangelizing AWS cloud computing architectures and development for various technologies like Mobile, Gaming, IoT, AI, Serverless just to name a few. Tara’s background is as a software engineer & developer who has worked on wide-ranging development platforms and systems while leveraging a myriad of development languages across her various technical and engineering roles. Over her 20+ year career, she has been employed by Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner, Georgia Pacific, and various other Fortune 500 companies. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University, and currently working on her Master’s degree in Computer Science (MSCS) at Georgia Institute of Technology. Tara's passion is to continue spreading the “good news” to diverse audiences about a plethora of technologies, development languages, and frameworks with a focus and proficiency in: - Cloud computing and Serverless architectures - IoT (Internet of Things) development - Mobile, Game, and Web development - Artificial Intelligence services and frameworks - NUI (Natural User Interfaces) & Biometric Interface service frameworks - Cross-Platform development frameworks You can find Tara on Twitter at @taraw.